  Joey (Jon Favreau), Ronnie (Malin Akerman), Dave (Vince Vaughn), Shane (Faizon Love) and Lucy (Kristin Davis) star in 'Couples Retreat', a comedy about four Midwestern couples who embark on a journey to a tropical island resort. They soon discover that participation in the resort's couples therapy is not optional. |
The mush of Couples Retreat was predictable. When Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn collaborated on Swingers 14 years ago, they were young, edgy and ready to rumble. Now they are softer, too successful and drowning in the pool of sentimentality.
Couples Retreat is a romantic comedy sending four troubled Chicago couples to a gorgeous South Seas retreat on a half-price vacation. The hitch is that they have to endure a couples counselling program run by mad social scientist Jean Reno.
What we endure is a wildly uneven movie, lurching from punch lines to pathos to putrid comic set-ups to sappy stuff about the work that relationships require. Favreau and Vaughn, who co-wrote with Dana Fox, play two of the guys, along with Jason Bateman and Faizon Love. Femme talent includes Malin Akerman, Kristin Bell and Kristin Davis. While they have their moments, they all could do better than this.
Couples Retreat debuted on DVD and Blu-ray in a rare Friday release, Canada only. The U.S. doesn’t get it until Tuesday.
The DVD and Blu-ray share most routine extras, including gag reel, extended therapy sessions and the joys and/or challenges of filming in remote Bora Bora. Blu-ray adds two extra deleted scenes, offers the commentary as picture-in-picture and provides a digital copy for mobile devices. The best bits among extras involve Vaughn, who is both sincere and sweet.
Amelia/Amelia Earhart: Queen of the Air
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Legendary American aviatrix Amelia Earhart is absolutely fascinating. And not just because she went missing on July 2, 1937, in the Pacific Ocean on her round-the-world flight, an unsolved mystery.
So Mira Nair’s biopic, Amelia, is worth seeing by sheer weight of what Earhart represented in her era — romance, adventure, bravery and tragedy. Plus, as a pioneering feminist, she was a catalyst in giving women a strong voice in a man’s world.
That is all touched upon in Nair’s pretty film. But the drama is muted because Amelia — the movie, not the woman — lacks soul and fire. Richard Gere’s casual performance as Earhart’s husband and promoter, George Putnam, also sucks out passion. Yet Hilary Swank’s Earhart is thrilling, and uncannily accurate when you compare her to vintage newsreels.
Amelia arrived on DVD and Blu-ray this week with identical extras, although the Blu-ray adds a digital copy. The extras are middling, but they do include Movietone newsreels. Some are incomplete but still provide valuable reference.
Better for history buffs is the modest yet thorough documentary, Amelia Earhart: Queen of the Air. This 1996 A&E Biography episode debuted on DVD this week. While conventional, the doc does bring Earhart’s life and times into focus, including her socio-political role in America during the Depression. That makes Queen of the Air a quality companion piece.
Zombieland
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Mischievous Me says Zombieland should have been included among Oscar’s best-picture nominees. Ruben Fleischer’s kick-ass, blood-splattered but cheerily romantic movie is that good. And that funny! Oops, being a comedy, not being gruesome, must have killed its Oscar opportunities.
Nevertheless, Zombieland is the best new DVD and Blu-ray this week, at least for genre fans. It is the kind of movie Stanley Kubrick would have made if he had followed A Clockwork Orange with a fast-zombies romp. Fleischer, meanwhile, does a fab job teaming Woody Harrelson, as the macho zombie-killer, with Jesse Eisenberg, as the nerd trying to find his inner survivor.
Both the DVD and Blu-ray are loaded with good extras. The Blu-ray adds featurettes as a picture-in-picture option, plus digital copy.
NEW THIS WEEK: Couples Retreat • Amelia • Amelia Earhart: Queen of the Air • Zombieland • Love Happens • Doctor Who: The Complete Specials.
NEW NEXT WEEK: A Serious Man • Emma • The Time Traveler’s Wife.
COMING SOON: The Informant! (Feb. 23) • Where the Wild Things Are (March 2).
